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Ask HN: The rising “Hackathon Hackers” culture

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Re: Ask HN: The rising “Hackathon Hackers” culture

#91

Post by empressplay »

MichaelCrawford wrote: post #3

The Portland Startup Weekend presented itself as a way to get a new company started, but they were blasting everyone's trade secrets all over facebook and twitter. There was no discussion of taxation, nor how equity would be divided. If you have the idea, I write the code, and angersock markets the product, how do we divide the equity? There are some good answers to that question but the Startup Weekend company - a p…

Yeah, I've had similar experiences with my regional Startup Weekend franchise as well. The way they see it it's actually about coming up with a convincing pitch. This isn't of course "starting a company" or even in most cases developing a product. Instead, it's about coming up with an intriguing idea, that since you're just at the starting line yourself, can be jumped on and stolen by whoever else is there and has more startup capital than you do.

Re: Ask HN: The rising “Hackathon Hackers” culture

#92

Post by DrJokepu »

fsk wrote: post #4

>Students who believe to be 1000x SE because they can stick two APIs together and use bootstrap end-up to be very condescending older engineers. Yeah, I've noticed that younger programmers started talking down to me like my experience is worthless. Then they ask me to debug their code for them. The frustrating part is that, when I interview, my experience in now-obsolete languages has a value of $0. My skill for unde…

I don't know about your specific case but it's typically not the presence old technologies that devalue a resume; it's their presence AND the lack of new technologies that does that, because it indicates that the candidate doesn't think it's important to keep himself up to date regarding the latest developments in his profession, which is a huge red flag.

Just this week we've interviewed a lady for a development position who had a very long career and had experience with not just old technologies such as, I don't know, Delphi, but she taught herself new things as well such as ASP.NET MVC and Node. She is a mother of two yet she has managed to find time to keep her skills up-to-date. Obviously we have offered her a senior position pretty much immediately.

Re: Ask HN: The rising “Hackathon Hackers” culture

#93

Post by mkingston »

mden wrote: post #31
parfe wrote: post #12

1. Get a PAID internship 2. Get a part time job 3. Graduate 4. Get a full time job 5. Do things for fun that don't involve computers. The fact I happen to interact with X framework in Y language, running on Z environment has zero relevence in my life. I more quickly ignore people talking about Ruby/Python/Javascript running Rails/Django/Node than the homeless person trying to wash my windshield. You get too involved…

And out of curiosity, how do you resolve your statements with the fact that you have over 5k karma and over 1k posts on this site alone?

~3 karma/day. ~3 karma/comment. Doesn't seem like that big a deal?

Re: Ask HN: The rising “Hackathon Hackers” culture

#94

Post by GFK_of_xmaspast »

jmcohen wrote: post #44

Penn's hackathon is by application only. I think this is pretty silly. Here's a quote from a Medium post by one of the event organizers announcing this year's low acceptance rate of 30% [1]: The people that got in had almost all either won major hackathons before or worked on multiple projects that each blew our socks off in a spectacular fashion. I'm just trying to imagine these kids at Penn sitting around a table d…

The alternatives to a juried pool are (a) first come, first serve and (b) random selection, which would you have preferred in this case?

("Admitting everyone" is simply not possible, there's neither the space nor the support staff)

Re: Ask HN: The rising “Hackathon Hackers” culture

#95

Post by shin_lao »

A hackathon is a good tool to brainstorm and have some Proof of Concept, but it is a bit silly to believe that it is a good way to build a lasting product and I must say a bit sad to think that what matters is making money.

Building web applications is a very small subset of software engineering with an extremely small subset of what life is about.

Just attend other meetups.

Re: Ask HN: The rising “Hackathon Hackers” culture

#96

Post by bildung »

golergka wrote: post #72
glhaynes wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." — [likely not] John Steinbeck

I guess from US you see that as something negative; but from outside this culture, it actually seems to be one of the best american qualities, to be honest. You're really lucky if you don't know what's it like to live in a country where all the poor people are certain that things will never change for the best and therefore do absolutely nothing about it.

You're really lucky if you don't know what's it like to live in a country where all the poor people are certain that things will never change for the best and therefore do absolutely nothing about it.

And yet the social mobility in the USA is quite low compared to other developed countries: "Several large studies of mobility in developed countries in recent years have found the US among the lowest in mobility." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socio-economic_mobility_in_the_...)

Empirically those countries with a highly built-out welfare system (e.g. those where the economic pressure on the poor individual is lowest) see higher probabilities of those poor people working themselves out of poverty.

Re: Ask HN: The rising “Hackathon Hackers” culture

#97

Post by argonaut »

aroman wrote: post #82
jmcohen wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I think that the idea that a hackathon can be "won" is silly too.

As a member of the team that "won" that hackathon, I agree. Interestingly, one of my least-favorite parts about "doing well" at hackathons like these is that I don't get the opportunity to go around to other tables and see what everyone has else made, and talk with them about it. Sometimes, really cool projects and people go under-noticed (I've been there as well).

But would you go to a hackathon with no prizes?

Re: Ask HN: The rising “Hackathon Hackers” culture

#98

Post by argonaut »

jonathankoren wrote: post #67
jmcohen wrote: post #44

Penn's hackathon is by application only. I think this is pretty silly. Here's a quote from a Medium post by one of the event organizers announcing this year's low acceptance rate of 30% [1]: The people that got in had almost all either won major hackathons before or worked on multiple projects that each blew our socks off in a spectacular fashion. I'm just trying to imagine these kids at Penn sitting around a table d…

Ironically does UPenn even have that highly regarded of a CS program? B-school sure, but CS? This really sounds like B-school bullshit.

UPenn's CS program is quite good. Sure MIT/Stanford/Berkeley/CMU might have better programs. But I've heard nothing but good things about UPenn.

Re: Ask HN: The rising “Hackathon Hackers” culture

#99

Post by argonaut »

GFK_of_xmaspast wrote: post #94
jmcohen wrote: post #44

Penn's hackathon is by application only. I think this is pretty silly. Here's a quote from a Medium post by one of the event organizers announcing this year's low acceptance rate of 30% [1]: The people that got in had almost all either won major hackathons before or worked on multiple projects that each blew our socks off in a spectacular fashion. I'm just trying to imagine these kids at Penn sitting around a table d…

The alternatives to a juried pool are (a) first come, first serve and (b) random selection, which would you have preferred in this case? ("Admitting everyone" is simply not possible, there's neither the space nor the support staff)

I think admitting everyone IS possible. It's important to realize that these hackathons spend thousands to fly a lot of out of state hackers in (travel reimbursements). These hackathons will also send buses to nearby colleges, and even colleges out of state (e.g. anything within an 8 hour drive). If they didn't do those things (especially airfare reimbursements - kind of excessive if you ask me, or limiting buses to 3 hour drives) as much as they do now, they'd be able to narrow the pool a lot.

Re: Ask HN: The rising “Hackathon Hackers” culture

#100

Post by [deleted] »

jonathankoren wrote: post #67
jmcohen wrote: post #44

Penn's hackathon is by application only. I think this is pretty silly. Here's a quote from a Medium post by one of the event organizers announcing this year's low acceptance rate of 30% [1]: The people that got in had almost all either won major hackathons before or worked on multiple projects that each blew our socks off in a spectacular fashion. I'm just trying to imagine these kids at Penn sitting around a table d…

Ironically does UPenn even have that highly regarded of a CS program? B-school sure, but CS? This really sounds like B-school bullshit.

[deleted]
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